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Land Records Showed the Way

One of the first stumbling blocks I encountered in my research was the family of my great-great-great-grandfather Peter Andrews (1814-1882), father of my great-great-grandmother Rebecca (Andrews) Whetstone, who married Absalom K. Whetstone of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.

A handy county-history biography of one of Rebecca and Absalom’s sons-in-law revealed the identity of Rebecca’s parents as Peter and Phoebe (Houser) Andrews.1 I found Peter in the 1850 and 1860 censuses,2 but what a difference there was between the two census entries! A household of eight headed by two adults became a household of eight mostly different children headed by one adult. Of the six children in the 1850 household, only two remained in the 1860 household. Peter’s occupation changed from sawyer to day labor, and his real estate holdings evaporated, leaving only a small personal estate. Clearly, something big happened. I was able to find real estate transactions and lawsuits explaining the changes in land holdings, but no burials to explain the disappearances of the 1850 family members.

I did locate Peter and the two youngest children in the 1880 census (having moved to Lycoming County in central Pennsylvania),3 and I found an 1860 marriage that might have belonged to the oldest son,4 but I couldn’t find the family in 1870, and, for a long period, my research was stuck. Ultimately, what got me unstuck was reading Lycoming County newspapers and finding clues that it wasn’t only Peter and the two youngest children who settled there. A trip to Lycoming County allowed me to access unmicrofilmed probate, marriage, and land records, solving the apparent disappearances of all the 1850 family members except for Peter’s wife (whose fate remains undocumented).

Peter owned land in Lycoming County, and it was the records of the disposal of that land5 that finally showed that all the 1850 children were still living. Before I found the land records, newspaper clues had led me to eight of Peter’s eleven children. The land records gave the married name of the oldest daughter, who was living in Lycoming County, along with the locations of the other two missing children. The oldest daughter’s married name also led me to that elusive 1870 census record, which showed Peter, miraculously recovered in finances and transformed into a farmer, along with seven of his children, living in Union County, just south of the Lycoming County line.6

After I followed up the bonanza of information from the Lycoming County land records, the life stories of two of Peter’s children, Mary, born about 1854, and Joshua, born about 1853, remained incomplete. The first Lycoming County quit claim deed showed that Joshua was married to someone named Elva, and that in 1883 the couple lived in Kootenai County, Idaho Territory.7 Searches for census and vital records were unproductive, but a visit to the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office records website revealed that Joshua Andrews received a homestead patent for a quarter-section of land in Kootenai County in 1891.8 Naturally, I ordered the serial patent file, which told me that Joshua, his wife, and two children settled on the land 14 March 1884 and lived there continuously until the completion of the patent filing in 1890.9

Despite the patent information, Joshua and his family continued to be elusive. Researchers at the Kootenai County Genealogical Society searched their research library without uncovering their traces.10 However, FamilySearch’s digitized microfilm of Kootenai County deed indexes, contained an entry a sale of land by “Josusha” Andrews in 1902, and I ordered the deed. When the deed arrived, it showed that “Josua” Andrews and Elva Andrews his wife of Jefferson County, Montana, sold their Kootenai County homestead land on 17 May 1902.11‘

This deed showed the way to Joshua’s entry in the 1900 census (ultimately located by searching for women named Elva in Jefferson County, Montana). The census record shows John (not Joshua) Andrew, born May 1854 in Pennsylvania, section foreman, in Township 7, Jefferson County, Montana. In his household were wife Elva Andrew, born in Illinois in May 1855, mother of two living children, and daughter Ruby B. Andrew, born March 1886 in Idaho.12 This looked like the right household, but verification was needed because of the name discrepancy. I built a census history for the family and identified the second child, a son named Arthur Ray Andrews.13 1910 was Joshua’s last census appearance. By 1930, the two Andrews children, now married, had moved on, Ruby to Klamath County, Oregon, and Arthur to Park County, Montana.14 Inexplicably, in the Montana census and marriage records, Joshua Andrews appeared as John.

Newspapers and Find A Grave completed Joshua and Elva’s story. Joshua died 4 May 1913 in Jefferson County. According to the Anaconda Standard, “John Andrews, one of Whitehall’s oldest and most respected citizens, died Sunday… Mr. Andrews was born in Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania, May 1, 1854, and in 1881 moved to Spokane, Wash., where he was employed in railroad work. While in Spokane he married Miss Elva Strickler, after which he moved to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and ranched a short time, afterward going back to railroad work. From there they moved to Whitehall in 1895 and had since been a resident of this city, employed by the Northern Pacific as a section foreman. There are two children in the family, Mrs. Ruby R. Moore of Spirit Lake, Idaho… and Ray Andrews of Livingston, an engineer on the Northern Pacific.”15 Joshua is buried in Whitehall Cemetery, under the name of John.16 Elva died 2 May 1924 in Klamath Falls, where she is buried in Linkville Pioneer Cemetery.17